This disclosure relates generally to selecting content for presentation to online system users and more particularly to targeting content for presentation to groups of users of an online system.
Traditionally, providers of content have attempted to tailor content presented to users based on expected demographics of users. Even before the advent of broadcast media, a business providing a product sought to purchase space for content describing or promoting that product in a publication read by typical consumers of the product. As publishing and broadcasting costs fell, more media catered to niche audiences, allowing content providers to more finely tune presentation of content to narrower groups of media consumers. Nonetheless, content presented in various media mainly cater to the typical consumer of the media in which the content is presented, causing atypical consumers of media to encounter content that is irrelevant to the atypical consumers. With the advent of personalized digital media, content may be matched to an individual user according to known traits of the user. However, producers of personalized digital media often have limited information about a user, so a content provider may miss opportunities to present a user with content relevant to the user because the content provider lacks explicit user information indicating that the user has characteristics placing the user in an audience of users to receive content from the content provider.